Anti-terrorist Laws Deplorable to Australian Academics

By Con George-Kotzabasis 

 

Professor of jurisprudence George Williams demonstrates conclusively that it’s not the vocation of constitutional lawyers to either “understand thy enemy” or protect the public from his more than probable lethal attacks. He woefully laments that the anti-terror laws enacted by the previous Howard government and continue to be implemented by the present one without any revision, “imprison people for words rather than actions”. This quote of his reveals clearly that he is oblivious of the historical fact that it’s more often than not that it’s “words” that inspire and lead to action. And this happens to be truer in the case of terrorists who are inspired by the words of their fundamentalist imams and perpetrate their atrocious actions.

Further he seems to be unaware that in all critical situations and especially in war times, individual and collective liberties are ineluctably constrained. A simple example would be that in a collision of several cars in a highway the motorists’ ‘liberty’ to use this highway is temporarily abrogated. Likewise the anti-terror laws are a temporary repeal of few liberties until this great Islamist threat hovering over and lurking under the cities of Western civilization is extinguished.

False Realists Onlookers to Atrocities of Brutal Iranian Regime

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s very sad to see Clemons making a mockery of his own facts. He states in one of his previous posts   “those who are being brutalized and risking everything (m.e.) to challenge Ahmadinejad and his thugs deserve our respect and our nuanced (m.e.) support.” While Iranians in substantial numbers are opposing a “military dictatorship,” that Clemons himself acknowledges as being so, for whom is an existential issue, for Clemons apparently is an issue of intellectually splitting hairs by his use of the words “respect” and “nuanced.” Ostensibly he is doing this as a ‘political realist’ who needs to see reality through always ‘nuanced’ binoculars. His fatal error is that by using these binoculars in all circumstances he blows up his political realism to smithereens by not realizing that in a situation where people are engaged in an existential struggle, they do not need “respect” and “nuanced support” but clear open sans nuance unequivocal support.

False realists of this sort, President Obama being one of them on this issue, by refusing to take an unambiguous stand in support of the modernist forces of Iran, become onlookers to the atrocities committed by the mullahcracy  that  in the process of fighting for its survival suppresses the peaceful democratic dissent against it by the most nefarious and brutal means.  

Iran’s Post-election Turmoil Heralds Obama’s Diplomacy Stillborn

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The dramatic events unfolding after the election of Ahmadinejad, whether legitimately or not, are also crippling Obama’s diplomacy and his Alice in wonderland Cairo speech, that mesmerized the ‘cerebral’ classes, and putting them both on crutches. And all the ‘grand bargainers’ from Flyntt Leverret to Juan Cole and the “hyper-active Clemons,” who has so little to show from his hyper activity, not to mention the ‘disciples’ of The Washington Note of David Hume and Bertrand Russel, are totally and irreversibly discredited. For the question is, that while the Theocratic regime for its own survival will have to clamp down with an iron fist the modernist forces of Iran and its putative leaders such as Mousavi, Rafsanjani, and Khatami-I’m saying putative because although they are apparently the leaders of these forces they themselves are not part of that modernity-and incarcerate and jail, if not covertly kill, some of the members of the educated classes if they continue to threaten the existence of the Mullahcratic regime, how then would be possible for President Obama to proffer to the regime the olive branches of his diplomacy when the latter was in the process of deflowering democracy in Iran? How could he possibly claim, with any credibility, that America by showing to the world that it was living and practising its values-which according to his simplistic notion would transform anti-Americanism  into a loving world –feast for America-would be changing its image, while at the same time was negotiating with the Mullahs at the tragic expense of the forces of modernity in Iran, when in fact Obama will be doing his own ‘Mossadegh act,’ launching his own “Operation Ajax,” which in his Cairo speech was one of the critical mea culpas of America, this time on the diplomatic domain which would be no less than a coup that would solidify and continue the existence of Iran as a dictatorship?

Alas, in such terms will be told the sad story of Obama’s stillborn diplomatic initiative toward rogue states and their sundry proxies.    

Rattling Jelly-boned Intellectuals

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Paul Norheim says http://thewashingtonnote.com

…Who on earth, Mr Rediker, asked US to lead the planet?…This idee fixe, this “claim” to global leadership is stupid,
dangerous, and unfounded and should be weakened. To
support this claim in public at the end of a decade where
America has done it`s utmost to destabilize the world,
demonstrates a mentality that is completely out of touch with
realities.

I don`t want to sound anti-American here, but sometimes I am
stunned by the hubris of certain Americans — this time
Douglas Rediker, who even has lived in Europe for more than 16
years!

I repeat what I`ve often said: I like America. But I have to admit
that the phrase “US leadership”, used in a global context,
sometimes makes me want to puke.

Posted by Dan Kervick, May 21 2009, 1:16AM – Link

You know, I would have liked this essay much better if Douglas Rediker had just used the term “G-20″ in every place in the last paragraph where he chose to use “President Obama” or “the US” instead.

I agree the IMF needs to get the committed money. But why make this some off-putting “US leadership” thing? It’s the G-20 that made the commitment collectively, didn’t it?

Kotzabasis says

Those who revolt against, and get sea sick at, the phrase “U.S. leadership” should take note that powerful nations do not lead the world because they are asked or invited to do so but by the nature of the ‘beast.’ They should re-read Thucydides’ tour de force, the Melian Dialogue. And those who “want to puke” whenever they hear or see the “phrase,” puke as a result of their maladjusted intellectual constitution.

Posted by Paul Norheim, May 21 2009, 6:37AM – Link

It would be futile to speculate about whether Nietzsche – another
admirer of “power” and “beasts”, and a likely source of inspiration
for the prose above this comment – would have been delighted or
disgusted, if he had witnessed the bloodstained spectacle called
“US global leadership” during the last decade. But we`ve all
noticed that the intellectual constitution of Mr. Kotzabasis is
perfectly adjusted for the task of applauding his heroes from the
peanut gallery.

Obama’s risen aloft ‘Diplomatic Skirts’ Alluring to Enemies of America

By Con George-Kotzabasis

For Obama to “co-opt” the N. Koreans into a “new dance,” presumably of diplomacy, as Steve Clemons of the Washington Note suggests,  in which America’s skirts will be risen aloft in the air, like Marilyn Monroe’s, one would need modicum imagination to see what the short build but sharply sighted North Koreans would do to the long legged Americans.

More seriously, the U.S. of course cannot invade or take any military action against N. Korea. But it can take hard economic sanctions presently and suspend the six-party talks that gives to a rogue state the facade of legitimacy, which it so much desires, and even place a naval embargo on N. Korea and prevent it from exporting its nuclear technology to other rogue states. And thus by “harshly” punishing N. Korea President Obama will avoid the punishment of “a credibility collapse at home,” to quote Clemons.

 While Clemons by implication concedes that a credibility collapse will damage the standing of his beloved president, especially when such a collapse will also have international ramifications, he nevertheless weirdly suggests “patience” toward the recalcitrant N. Koreans–that have already in the past violated  earlier agreements they had compacted with previous administrations, such as The Agreed Framework, Pyongyang-Washington agreement, under President Clinton –as a “wise” measure, and indeed, as a “tough strategy,” to quote him again. The question that Clemons has to answer however is what kind of “patience” ever prevented a “credibility collapse.” But apparently for Clemons doing nothing or doing something that lacks strategic substance is a “tough strategy.”

The great danger is however that the N. Korean defiance has opened the bottle releasing the ‘meme’ that other rogue states such as Iran will adopt and replicate against the U.S. And one can only second-guess what the Mullahs will do to Obama’s diplomatic skirts.

What will I’ve to do to entice you to comment? I’ve neither skirts nor long legs.

Iran:Know thy Enemy

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama with his latest commitment to the war in Afghanistan seems to be harking to the realists of his political and diplomatic advisors, such as Richard Holbrooke, and is readying himself to debunk the bunk of his leftist supporters of ending America’s military involvement in the hot spots of the world and adopting and continuing the bellicose policy of the former Bush administration against the terrorist extremists. In his announcement of his ‘new’ policy in Afghanistan he very closely repeated Bush’s words that as President he would not allow Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorists that the latter would use once again to attack the American homeland. Hence he clearly coupled the war in Afghanistan with America’s security and therefore made it very difficult for the anti-war movement to continue influencing the silent majority, as it did against the Bush administration, toward a pacifist position since such a position would be senseless and stupid to anyone whose life was under a direct threat. Obama therefore placed himself in a politically strong position that even an increase of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan could not erode since this is the price that America will have to pay for its security. One therefore can say “hats off to Obama,” to quote Robert Kagan from his piece in the Washington Post, for his new strategy in Afghanistan.

What is most worrying however is in verity the president’s new policy in regard to Iran. In his keen propensity to detach himself from the ‘fisticuffs’ policy of his predecessor which he considered to be wrong and politically infertile, Obama, as he had promised during the presidential campaign, is opening the door of diplomacy to the ‘Mullahcratic’ regime hoping that the latter will be susceptible to the diplomatic blandishments and calls of reason that the U.S.A. and Iran could ‘live and let live’ with each other if they had the will and wisdom to change the belligerent attitudes of the past toward each other. This is a laudable aim but the question is whether it will resonate with the Theocratic regime in Tehran. President Obama in his direct address to the Iranian people, in their new year’s day, went out of his way to praise the Islamic Republic and the cultural achievements of its people. But what is in a name when one could praise in the same terms the united republics of the USSR, the republic of Mao’s China, the republic of Cambodia under Pol Pot, and a sundry of ‘genocidal’ republics in Africa with the only difference being that the scale of atrocities are not as high in Iran as they have been with the above blood-lusted republics. But who knows, with a future nuclear armed Iran the latter could surpass them all on the scale of wickedness.

It’s this great danger that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to Western nations and to the U.S. that the latter as the supreme power in the world must prevent. And the ambition of Tehran to acquire a nuclear armoury is un-ambiguous and unyielding. Only few days ago President Ahmadinejad in his address to the Iranian people proudly proclaimed that Iran would not cease its nuclear programme as its achievement is the deserved status of a great nation. It’s obvious that Ahmadinejad took his lines directly from the speech of Obama who praised so exuberantly the Islamic Republic and its cultural achievements. But in the hope of the President that by paying homage and offering peace to the Tehran regime it would de-couple the latter from its religious fanatic nucleus and its great hate toward America, Obama shows himself to be irretrievably naive and abysmally ignorant of the duplicitous enemy he is facing.

The foremost intelligence apparatus in the Middle East the Israeli one had its chief Major General Amos Yadlin saying early this month, …”Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.” Moshe Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff, dismissed the possibility of a revitalized peace process, saying that “the jihadists interpret compromise as weakness.”(M.E.) He cited the withdrawal from Gaza four years ago which many had thought at the time it would debilitate the conflict, instead it encouraged it. And this is exactly how the Iranian leadership sees Obama’s ‘open door’ diplomacy, as a screeching sound of American weakness, as in its eyes the relative isolation of the U.S. among its allies, Russia and China and its inability to persuade the latter to take harder sanctions against them limpidly demonstrates this weakness. And this enfeeblement of the U.S. is further exemplified in Iran’s view by the North Korean defiance in its rocket launching, which, only few months ago in the last days of the Bush administration, was participating in direct talks with U.S envoys in regard to its nuclear programme–that that stalwart and hawk-eyed in foreign affairs John Bolton had predicted with characteristic insight that the talks would come to nothing. If miniscule N. Korea could so brazenly defy the U.S., in spite of the commitments it made during the negotiations, what the great Islamic Republic of Iran would do in future negotiations with the Americans?

President Obama and his close advisers are incapable of realising that an enemy who sees the United States as being politically compelled to negotiate from a weak position cannot be forced by diplomatic means to accept the demand of the Americans and their allies that Iran must cease the development of its nuclear programme. Hence Obama’s administration is setting up its tent of diplomacy in a barren desert where the Iranian diplomatic camels will come empty of any reciprocal ‘gifts’ to the peaceful and morally generous gestures of the Obama administration. It’s inconceivable to imagine, that if not Obama, that some of his close and more astute consigliori are unable to anticipate the futility and dangers of diplomacy with a foe who considers himself to be negotiating from a position of strength. The only result that can come out from such negotiations with the Iranians is for the Americans to come out as losers from this parley or walk out of the talks with the tail in-between their legs in a scornfully embarrassed state.

This will be the fate of President Obama’s diplomatic overture with the Iranian theocratic regime as an outcome of his total inability to “know thy enemy,” a prerequisite, according to the great Chinese strategist and sage Sun Zi, in defeating one’s mortal enemy. But the final judgment on President Obama–the constitutional lawyer and former community organizer, a rookie in the art of statecraft and who in his Prague address beyond proclaiming, with humility soaked in weakness, America’s decline, indulged himself also to make some trite ‘brandy(ed)’ derisive comments about the two great statesmen Churchill and Roosevelt who defeated the Axis powers–who as a result of the pathological hate—that neutralized even the ingrained racism that many Americans have toward blacks–that a great part of the electorate had toward Bush-Cheney and by association the Republicans, was swept by this bitter wind into the Oval Office, will be rendered by a Shakespearean Sovereign, King Lear: “Nothing comes out of nothing.”          

   

 

MoveOn Org’s Add on General Petraeus Betrays America

I’m republishing this post from another blog of mine to show and remind people of the bitter and unremitting hate that the American Left has even for its great generals.

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to: Beyond “The Ad”:Getting Back to Substance in the Petraeus Controversy, by Steven Clemons in the Washington Note, September 20, 2007

The MoveOn org’s ad General Petraeus Or General Betray Us in the New York Times has sparked a great controversy and debate, as it naturally was expected to do, forcing the Democrats to repudiate it and the majority of them to vote against it in Congress thus engendering a serious split between them and their anti-war constituency. It also forced some liberal gurus to stealthily detach themselves from the ad without damaging their connection with the anti-war crowd. Clemons, the liberal scholar and blogger of the Washington Note, apparently with admiration quotes Chris Matthews’ wiseacre, “the ad didn’t kill anybody” as being Solomonic wisdom, as well as for the purpose of sopping up and appeasing the “MoveOners”. The ad certainly didn’t physically kill anybody. But it certainly attempted to kill the spirit, the dedication, and the moral fortitude of all American soldiers in Iraq who consider and applaud General Petraeus as being a superb commander, and are honored and proud to serve under his command.

It was a shameful attack upon the military front-line US forces and the soldier-savants, like David Petraeus, who are the real and only defenders of America against this onslaught of fanatic barbarians. In the chronicles of this war the “ad” will be written with the obloquy it deserves. As by betraying the beliefs of the troops about their military commander, the ad by implication betrayed the interests of the nation at this critical juncture of its history that the deadly challenge of Islamofascism poses.

As a consequence of the above reply the following discussion took place on the Washington Note.

Carroll said…

May I ask if you have any military combat experience? Or any military experience?
I don’t, but my older brother was a three purple hearts, two bronze stars and one silver star Marine Lt. in Vietnam.

And he says that Petraeus is a prime example of the “political” generals in the military,..he called them total “suck ups” and “desk managers”.

Kotzabasis said…

Yes I do Carrol! I have the “experience” of 160,000 American soldiers presently serving in Iraq who are winning purple hearts, bronze stars, and silver stars galore with their heroic stand against the stealthy murderous insurgents, and who consider, I repeat, General Petraeus to be a superb commander (not a “suck up”)and are honored and proud to serve under his leadership.

So if you follow with intellectual rigor your own logic, 160,000 experienced soldiers who think differently from your brother about the subject Petraeus, surely and decisively trump the “experience” of your brother. So by your own logic you too must accept the appraisal, of all those star-laden soldiers, of General Petraeus. And hence come to the same conclusion, like myself, that the MoveON ad was a betrayal of the troops serving in Iraq, and by implication a betrayal of America.

Liberals Continue to Jab Cheney since his Departure

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s amusing to see all the passionate and incorrigible haters of Cheney to have a jab at him even “posthumously” Out of Office. Emily Bazelon on Slate Magazine speaks for all these haters but the context with ‘revenge’ belies what she says about Cheney. The latter did not say at anytime that the documents on torture should be ‘declassified,’ but once they were, they should not have been declassified selectively without also revealing the positive aspects of the harsh interrogations.

The Bush-Cheney administration prudently–knowing thy enemy–unlike the imprudent Obama who apparently lacks rudimentary knowledge of the kind of enemy America is fighting, were unwilling to disclose to their Islamist enemies some of the methods by which the key holy warriors held as enemy combatants were “spilling the beans.”

Halliburton says

Since the memos thus far released were all part of FoIA filings, it was not up to the administration to release them. Based on the Obama administration’s own FoIA policies, the memos had to be released. I might point out that Cheney’s own FoIA request is selective, listing only two documents, and then only some of the pages from those documents.

The “disclosing of interrogation methods” meme is claptrap. All of the methods the Bush administration sought to use are centuries old; SERE-derived methods are duplicates of torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean War. There’s nothing new to disclose.

Kotzabasis says

Certainly you are right that the memos according to President Obama’s FoIA policies had to be released since in January 21, 2009 he loosened Bush’s Executive order of November 2001 pursuant to national interests by repealing some provisions of the order. Cheney’s selectivity is consistent in this respect with the political acumen of the previous administration in being determined not to reveal to the enemy—even out of office– unlike Obama in office, its secret procedures in this matter.

As for the “disclosing of interrogation methods,” the sting of the “claptrap” is in you. To say, as you do, that these “methods…are centuries old…duplicates of torture used by the Chinese and North Koreans,” says more about the fertility of your imagination than of the complexity of the situation. Is it conceivable to you that Pentagon and CIA Intelligence confronting a unique enemy such as suicidal fanatical warriors would be using the same techniques and methods of the past without innovating new ones? But I suppose your intellectually barren answer would be “there is nothing new to disclose.”

Halliburton says

It’s certain that Cheney wants to keep portions of the reports he wants released secret, but I don’t have your faith in his judgment. After all, we are talking about the man who helped create the 1976 “Team B” report on the capabilities of the USSR, which was wrong on every detail, notably the nuclear-powered laser beam weapons the Soviets were supposedly building. Cheney also thought it a good idea to undercut Gorbachev in 1989, and Brent Scowcroft and James Baker squelched him. I’d be more likely to believe that Cheney doesn’t want portions of those reports released because they might undercut his assertions.

My “infertile imagination” seeks exceptional proof in the case of exceptional claims. Nothing about Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers is unique in history. Your claim that the CIA has some “new” methods of torture – “enhanced interrogation” if you wish – is an exceptional one, and would require exceptional proof. Only disclosure would provide that. It’s far more likely, however, that your imagination is overheated.

Kotzabasis says

I don’t want to go back to the past, mistakes can be made and only the Pope is infallible. And just as someone can be ‘serially’ correct in the past he is not bound to be correct all the time in the future. The same logic applies in inverse to Cheney.

But your belief is misplaced as already the portions of the reports released have “undercut” The Bush administration’s “assertions.” Cheney therefore is more concerned to prove that the “enhanced interrogation” did work in preventing the jihadists launching further attacks and releasing those memos that provide this evidence while ‘clinically’ isolating them from the overall intelligence that would be invaluable to the jihadists.

All the professionals in matters of war in contrast to laypersons consider al Qaeda to be a unique enemy. Of course there have been fanatics and their “fellow travelers” in all ages. But just give one example from ‘your own’ history where the mortal foes of a nation were operating within it clad in civilian clothes and in the carapace of cutting-edge technology and armed with the most modern deadly weapons, including potentially with nuclear ones, and crashing airbuses into the sky scrapers of a metropolis. If you cannot provide such an example of an enemy then you too must logically come to the conclusion that the holy warriors of Islam are verily unique foes.

In view of this incontrovertible fact do you consider an “exceptional claim” that needs “exceptional proof” that the intelligence services of a superpower such as America confronting such a ‘supernally’ dangerous enemy in times of asymmetrical warfare would not have developed new interrogation methods that would be appropriate in extracting vital information from their captives   saving thousands of lives? It would take lukewarm imagination to have come to this deduction.

Join the fray     

Churchillian Leadership in our Dangerous Times

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The eminent economist Jeffrey Sachs is of course correct to pin point the non-commissions and omissions of political leadership. But leadership of Churchillian stature does not arise as he claims from collectivities such as the UN and the World Bank, but from the ‘soloist’ reflections, sagacity, resolution, and guidance of Statesmen. In the present world scenario what is missing is the vocation of politics being in the hands of virtuoso politicians with the Nietzschean ethos of the “will to power” determining the affairs of mankind. And parallel to the latter, is the necessary euthanasia of the woeful populist politician, a la Obama and Rudd.

Sentimentalist Wailing of an Australian Barrister about Preemptive War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“Adherence to the international rule of law,” to quote Tynan who studied international law, when one has fanatic enemies who are continuously in blatant breach of these laws and are determined to destroy them? What kind of sentimentalism is Daniel Tynan a votary of?

Obama’s conspicuous silence and quibbling about “pre-emptive self-defence,” as his above quote shows ( He stated when asked about Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war that “we have to view our security in terms of a common security and a common prosperity with other people and other countries.”), might be the result that he too believes , or at least his closest military advisers, but it’s impolitic for him to admit it, that Bush’s doctrine is the most pragmatic one against the kind of enemy one is encountering.